With all the hue and cry about Asian carp and a few stories in the news recently about zebra mussels contributing to bird dieoffs in the Great Lakes, it’s probably not PC to talk about how “invasive species” can actually improve things here and there. Like:
How about the improved water clarity and smallie fishing in the Great Lakes?
And how about that fish in the pic? That’s Amos Gay and his world record 5-pound, 7.5-ounce shellcracker (redear sunfish). He caught that whale in August ’98 from a hole where the Santee Cooper Diversional Canal meets Lake Moultrie.
And it wasn’t an anomaly: A 5-04 shellcracker was caught just a couple minutes before.
Conventional wisdom is that the shellcrackers got huge though a combo of herbicides killing weeds, exposing the canal bottom, and lots of food – in the form of zebra mussels.
I read once that biological pollution was the most insidious form of pollution because it could never be completely eradicated. I believe it. So time for shellcracker tourneys – which probably exist already.
If you disagree, I’m opining here as someone who doesn’t have a particularly deep knowledge of the subject, so swing away….
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AlexV
December 14, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Zebra Mussels along with that other invasive, the Goby, has turned Southern Lake Michigan (Milwaukee,Chicago, Gary ) into a great smallie fishery, with a fledgeling walleye population, and it will only improve in the future. Although the Salmon and Smelt fisheries have diminished considerably as a result.
BobbyJ
December 14, 2010 at 1:41 pm
The downside is in things that aren’t necessarily associated with fishing. Ask any power plant manager about the costs of zebra mussels.